china doll (break me down)
by sweetwatersong
Summary: Natalia is a Russian corporate spy sent to infiltrate the network of businesses and charities run by the so-called 'Avengers'. Natasha is the woman who befriends them. You can only exist as two people for so long before you have to make a choice; before the fall-out comes.


**china doll (break me down)**  
>rating: pg-13<br>characters: Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanoff  
>warnings: brief language<br>summary: Natalia is a Russian corporate spy sent to infiltrate the network of businesses and charities run by the so-called 'Avengers'. Natasha is the woman who befriends them. You can only exist as two people for so long before you have to make a choice; before the fall-out comes.

For some background, in this AU Natalia/Natasha is still a Russian spy under a cover of working with the Avengers, all corporate employees or CEOs, CFOs, etc. She gathers intel and takes on side trips/covert missions while masquerading as a middle rank worker, hiding behind suits and heels and glasses. Natalia is who she was in the Red Room and who she is as a Russian spy, but Natasha is the one who grows close to the Avengers, developing genuine connections and gaining reasons to leave her old life that she has never had before (was never allowed to make those bonds in her other assignments; here she is almost free to live her own life until her leash gets pulled and she's summoned to run another errand or hand over more intel). A divide keeps growing between the two sides of her, between who she's supposed to be and who she wants to be, until she deliberately breaks protocol - and in the process, herself.

_china doll (break me down)_

"What are you running from, Natasha? I've never seen you run from anything."

She's bent over in the alleyway behind the bar heaving, the gasps dry and sour in her mouth, trying to breathe, trying to be. _Calm. Center. Clear. Cal_ – fuck. Fuck it all, she is never going to make it. The laugh, when it comes, is bitter.

Friends. No torture, no threats, no manipulation has ever brought her to this point – and all it has taken is the thought that she finally has friends. It is the love she bears them and these choices that have brought her to her knees.

_Don't fall in love, _Mariposa's voice whispers in her memories, and she understands the dreadful longing on the thin girl's face. Haunted, that was the word. She had been haunted by her own lover, as Natalia is now haunted by her.

"Natasha?" The hand on her back, the foreign name bring her back to herself. Bruce's voice is hesitant, uncertain. Of course it is; he's never seen her break. No one ever has. The Red Room girls were like china dolls; when they broke, it was all into pieces.

_Fuck_ her past. She slams a hand into the brick wall, feeling the skin part in new scrapes. Fuck what it has made her.

She never really did move beyond it.

"I'm okay," she manages, sides heaving. "I'm fine."

"Somehow I doubt that," he replies, and with her hitching words she cannot fault him. "Can I help?"

Bless him. For not asking what is wrong, why she is shattering, why her ineffable calm has vanished. Just _"Can I help?" _Natalia – _Natasha_ gulps down air, shivers running over her skin, and forces herself to exhale.

"Please."

No needles or needs have ever drawn that word from her. One man, another man, once again she is falling – changing. What has become of her?

What is she going to become?

She falls asleep in his beat-up Volkswagen, head against the doorframe as the heater rattles with hot air and smooth jazz plays through the static. The pull into her driveway doesn't rouse her with its bumps over a concrete curb onto tar. Even when he puts the car into park she dreams on, lost in a floating sleep.

Bruce studies her, a sad smile touching one corner of his mouth, and after a few moments slips out, leaving the driver-side door open. Moments later the garage door rolls up and he slips back in, pulling into the empty space before turning off the Beetle. A dusty plaid blanket emerges from the backseat, half shaken until it unfolds and can be tucked around her shoulders.

"Sleep well, Natasha." She doesn't stir at his soft words or the squeak as the driver-side door shuts under his careful hands. He lowers the garage door, leaving the overhead light on in case she wakes up, and closes the door to the mud room quietly behind him.

She rouses to a stiff pain in her neck and the feeling of having slept too deeply, too little. A handful of startled heartbeats later she manages to place herself in Bruce's car by the dented dashboard, then in her garage by the familiar shelves of boxes and dusty tools. But that moment of disorientation, of losing her bearings, is enough to shake her to her core – and set her free.

There are dishes in the sink, a pan on the stove with a towel on the handle, cracked eggshells in a bowl by the refrigerator. She moves through her own house like it is a wonderland, not knowing what will come next and unafraid of finding out. Around the corner a breakfast setting is laid out on the rosewood table, fork and knife set just so on a napkin she's sure she hadn't folded after taking out of the dryer. But it's clean and white and the carton of orange juice sits by the glass, with another napkin draped over the plate.

When she lifts it up, golden pancakes greet her.

"Good morning," Bruce says, looking up from the couch and the morning newspaper. "I hope you don't mind that I made you breakfast."

"Normally I've only gotten that after I've slept with someone." Her voice is rough from the night before but warm, with an affection that could be genuine, and Natasha is not surprised to find she means this fondness.

"A lady sleeping in my car is as close as I've come to any dates in the last few months, so I'd say we're even." He takes off his glasses and tucks them into his breast pocket, standing. "Let me go get you some syrup. I wasn't sure if you wanted the fake kind in your pantry or the real one stashed behind your salad dressings." His amusement is soft, easy to catch.

"The real kind, if you don't mind; I bought it in Canada last year."

His eyebrows lift.

"Canada? I didn't know you went traveling."

"Not many people do." And the words are not hesitant, her fears are not present; the woman who seats herself in the chair is not the same one who rose from it yesterday.

"I've always wondered what it's like up there," he comments as he steps into the kitchen, leaving a gentle lead-in if she wants to elaborate, an easy rebuff if she chooses not to. Natasha smiles, fingers running over the edges of the linens, and feels gratitude grow in her chest.

She really does love him.

"Surprisingly, they are as polite as everyone says." She accepts the cool bottle from him with a nod and he takes the chair to her left, not opposite and opposing but aligned, side by side.

"Are the accents as noticeable as the cartoons make them out to be?"

She gestures with a forkful of pancake, drizzling viscous syrup over the stack.

"I've heard worse in Wisconsin."

"Is that so? I've always wanted to go up during the winter. I'd like to see a moose, someday."

"I'd advise you against getting into a wrestling match with one. Although to think about it, I'm not sure who would win." She cuts a piece, chews and swallows. "Mm. Bruce, these are delicious; thank you." And it's for more than the food, more than the gentle company, and whether he knows it…

"You're welcome." The corners of his eyes crinkle with his tiny smile. She grins back. "Feeling better?"

Natasha swallows the bite in her mouth, washing it down with a sip of juice, because he deserves to hear the truth, deserves to hear it unhindered.

"Better than I have in years."

And for a moment they simply accept each other for who they are, secrets and half-truths and problems aside. She takes more comfort in that she had expected, and it feels… good.

"I'm glad. I thought sleeping like that might give you some neck stiffness. For a reclining couch, I have to say yours is pretty comfortable."

"I didn't know if anyone would ever use it," she tells him with a touch of regret. "But I thought, if someone ever does, it should at least be comfortable."

"Then I can tell you, you can lay your fears to rest," he advises. Natasha takes another bite of her pancakes and wonders if food has always tasted this good.

"I will."

In some ways, she thinks, she already has.

_end_


End file.
